The value of live art: experience, politics and affect
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Sociology
Abstract
This research explores the value of live art to a range of difference people, from those who directly participate in a live art project to the general public who engage with an exhibition in a community arts centre. In particular, the research focuses on an art project entitled Fun With Cancer Patients, lead by artist Brian Lobel as part of Fierce Festival in Birmingham. Fun With Cancer Patients involves a group of teenage volunteers who are undergoing or have experienced cancer treatment: the young people work on 'actions' of their own devising (these may be photography, writing, performance, whatever the young person chooses) and these actions and the process of creating them are documented at a public exhibition which will be attended by a large, mixed audience over a number of weeks. The topic of cancer, an illness which is likely to affect most people either directly or indirectly, is often talked about in a limited range of ways which do not always express people's lived, emotional and political experiences. Fun With Cancer Patients aims to widen the possibilities for communicating about cancer. The research will follow all stages of the project paying critical attention to the experiences and affective responses of people involved, and it will develop and use innovative qualitative methods in order to explore the value of the art to the individuals involved and also in terms of generating broader understandings of cancer. The research aims to contribute to a better understanding of the potential of live art in generating meaningful possibilities for expressing and understanding complex experiences and emotions, and creating alternative knowledges and modes of expression.
Planned Impact
This research has the potential to enhance quality of life, health and creative output. It will impact on the following groups of people:
- Artists, curators, artistic directors and those working in the Creative Industries will benefit from the knowledge generated around the value of artistic processes and outputs. They will be able to use this information in order to make artistic decisions and also in generating and taking up new projects and funding opportunities which might deploy similar techniques with different constituent groups. Creative Industries working directly with young people and/or health service users should benefit from the findings and may be able to use some of the methods and findings in assessing and evaluating future projects.
- Health professionals will benefit from the enhanced understanding the research will offer into the impact on patients and practitioners of being directly involved with art projects. This may relate to both enhanced health benefits and/or greater understandings of health issues.
- Galleries or community arts spaces (such as the Midlands Arts Centre) will benefit from understanding how exhibitions such as Fun With Cancer Patients are engaged with by their audiences and how their gallery spaces might provide a site for the production and exchange of complex social understandings and thereby contribute significantly to the local community. Audience response is notoriously difficult to research, and the outputs from this research will offer interesting information regarding audience demographics, levels and quality of audience participation and engagement, and the possible social and political impact of that engagement.
More broadly, Fun With Cancer Patients has the potential to improve understandings and knowledges around experiences of cancer for a wider public including young participants (up to 15 people), visitors to the art exhibition (target 5100 people) and a more general public who find out about the project via media communications. The research will contribute significantly to this, benefiting a broader public by communicating the findings which report on a) the cultural, social and political value of live art and b) diverse experiences, understandings and knowledges about cancer through its own outputs.
- Artists, curators, artistic directors and those working in the Creative Industries will benefit from the knowledge generated around the value of artistic processes and outputs. They will be able to use this information in order to make artistic decisions and also in generating and taking up new projects and funding opportunities which might deploy similar techniques with different constituent groups. Creative Industries working directly with young people and/or health service users should benefit from the findings and may be able to use some of the methods and findings in assessing and evaluating future projects.
- Health professionals will benefit from the enhanced understanding the research will offer into the impact on patients and practitioners of being directly involved with art projects. This may relate to both enhanced health benefits and/or greater understandings of health issues.
- Galleries or community arts spaces (such as the Midlands Arts Centre) will benefit from understanding how exhibitions such as Fun With Cancer Patients are engaged with by their audiences and how their gallery spaces might provide a site for the production and exchange of complex social understandings and thereby contribute significantly to the local community. Audience response is notoriously difficult to research, and the outputs from this research will offer interesting information regarding audience demographics, levels and quality of audience participation and engagement, and the possible social and political impact of that engagement.
More broadly, Fun With Cancer Patients has the potential to improve understandings and knowledges around experiences of cancer for a wider public including young participants (up to 15 people), visitors to the art exhibition (target 5100 people) and a more general public who find out about the project via media communications. The research will contribute significantly to this, benefiting a broader public by communicating the findings which report on a) the cultural, social and political value of live art and b) diverse experiences, understandings and knowledges about cancer through its own outputs.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Catherine Lambert (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Lambert C
(2016)
The affective work of art: an ethnographic study of Brian Lobel's Fun with Cancer Patients Brian Lobel's Fun with Cancer Patients
in The Sociological Review
Lambert, C
(2018)
The Live Art of Sociology
| Description | Aesthetic interventions (exemplified by live art) can have a powerful political and social impact. This finding is important from a 'social/ political' point of view, as it provides insight into how social and political change can come about. It is also an important contribution to the 'cultural value' debates seeking to demonstrate the ways in which culture is vital. Political change does not (just) occur at the macro level but occurs in micro relations and inter-subjective encounters. Affect is central to understanding how such political change takes place. Specifically (from the Fun with Cancer Patients Research), particular types of aesthetic interventions enable different ways of experiencing and talking about cancer, cancer treatment and death. Fun with Cancer Patients offered young cancer patients and those who work with them, as well as a wider public audience, significantly different ways in which to engage with 'cancer' than those normally on offer from medical and charity interventions. Affect is a key mechanism for creating new knowledge and political possibilities around difficult subjects (such as cancer, death) (FwCP). This is also emerging as relevant in the Stan's Café project in schools relation to the British values agenda. It is possible to empirically observe and gain understanding about affective, sensory, embodied and pre- (or in excess of) cognitive experiences and knowledges, but often this requires the development and utilisation of different sociological theories and methods which can be developed through interdisciplinary/collaborative work. |
| Exploitation Route | Used as evidence to demonstrate value of such initiatives. Used to secure funding. Used to make changes in ways significant issues such as cancer and death are engaged with in relation to young people and in pubmic discourse. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | Used by artists and support workers as evidence that arts interventions have signicant effects on participants. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |